Since Christ is the host of the meal, and very much present in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, the focus and central dynamic of the event are in the present, not the past. We are not, then, reliving or reenacting a past event—neither the event of the cross nor the event of the Last Supper. We are, rather, allowing a past event to shape and inform the present.

—Gordon T. Smith, A Holy Meal: The Lord’s Supper in the Life of the Church, 40

The Lord’s Supper is the meal of the church, the body of Christ, and our basis for gathering around this table is not our blood affiliation but the fact that we have been called together by Christ. This meal, in the language of the hymn “The Church’s One Foundation,” is the holy food of the faith community:

Elect from every nation,
Yet one o’er all the earth;
Her charter of salvation,
One Lord, one faith, one birth;
One holy Name she blesses,
Partakes one holy food,
And to one hope she presses,
With every grace endued.

—Gordon T. Smith, A Holy Meal: The Lord’s Supper in the Life of the Church, 54

The sacramental actions of the church—baptism and the Lord’s Supper—are concrete, tangible, and visible means by which the church takes the very stuff of creation, water, bread, and cup, and in response to the invitation and command of Christ reenacts the wonder of the gospel.In so doing, the material creation is a means by which God’s grace is known.

—Gordon T. Smith, A Holy Meal: The Lord’s Supper in the Life of the Church,28

The glory of the incarnation is that the physicality of Jesus—His human nature—is the very means by which God is known.In other words, the humanity of Jesus was not an obstacle to God’s revelation that we somehow need to look past to find God.On the contrary, the humanity of Jesus, His tangible, physical, material presence, was and is the way by which God is known through Jesus.The incarnation is the ultimate declaration of what is proclaimed repeatedly in Genesis 1: God saw what He had made, and it was good.

—Gordon T. Smith, A Holy Meal: The Lord’s Supper in the Life of the Church, 27

The Lord’s Supper is first and foremost an encounter with God’s love.As St. Francis de Sales counseled, “Your great intention in receiving Communion should be to advance, strengthen, and comfort yourself in the love of God.”

—Gordon T. Smith, A Holy Meal: The Lord’s Supper in the Life of the Church, 66

The efficacy of the Lord’s Supper does not, finally, rest on our faith or our sincerity or the depth of our resolve.The energy that sustains this meal and makes it a holy meal is that which is provided through the ministry of the Spirit.

—Gordon T. Smith, A Holy Meal: The Lord’s Supper in the Life of the Church,118